The Deluge- Volume 2 Page 26

  “There is no other kind,” answered Zagloba, with deep conviction.

  “And is their king no better?”

  “Their king is the worst of all. He began this war of purpose to blaspheme the true faith in the churches.”

  Here Kovalski, who had drunk much, rose and said: “If that is true, then as sure as you are looking at me, and as I am Kovalski, I’ll spring straight at the Swedish king in the first battle, and though he stood in the densest throng, that is nothing! My death or his! I’ll reach him with my lance,—hold me a fool, gentlemen, if I do not!”

  When he had said this he clinched his fist and was going to thunder on the table. He would have smashed the glasses and decanters, and broken the table; but Zagloba caught him hastily by the arm and said,—

  “Sit down, Roh, and give us peace. We will not think you a fool if you do not do this, but know that we will not stop thinking you a fool until you have done it. I do not understand, though, how you can raise a lance on the King of Sweden, when you are not in the hussars.”

  “I will join the escort and be enrolled in the squadron of Prince Polubinski; and my father will help me.”

  “Father Roh?”

  “Of course.”

  “Let him help you, but break not these glasses, or I’ll be the first man to break your head. Of what was I speaking, gentlemen? Ah! of Chenstohova. Luctus (grief) will devour me, if we do not come in time to save the holy place. Luctus will devour me, I tell you all! And all through that traitor Radzivill and the philosophical reasoning of Sapyeha.”

  “Say nothing against the voevoda. He is an honorable man,” said the little knight.

  “Why cover Radzivill with two halves when one is sufficient? Nearly ten thousand men are around this little booth of a castle, the best cavalry and infantry. Soon they will lick the soot out of all the chimneys in this region, for what was on the hearths they have eaten already.”

  “It is not for us to argue over the reasons of superiors, but to obey!”

  “It is not for you to argue, Pan Michael, but for me; half of the troops who abandoned Radzivill chose me as leader, and I would have driven Karl Gustav beyond the tenth boundary ere now, but for that luckless modesty which commanded me to place the baton in the hands of Sapyeha. Let him put an end to his delay, lest I take back what I gave.”

  “You are only so daring after drink,” said Volodyovski.

  “Do you say that? Well, you will see! This very day I will go among the squadrons and call out, ‘Gracious gentlemen, whoso chooses come with me to Chenstohova; it is not for you to wear out your elbows and knifes against the mortar of Tykotsin! I beg you to come with me! Whoso made me commander, whoso gave me power, whoso had confidence that I would do what was useful for the country and the faith, let him stand at my side. It is a beautiful thing to punish traitors, but a hundred times more beautiful to save the Holy Lady, our Mother and the Patroness of this kingdom from oppression and the yoke of the heretic.’”

  Here Zagloba, from whose forelock the steam had for some time been rising, started up from his place, sprang to a bench, and began to shout as if he were before an assembly,—

  “Worthy gentlemen! whoso is a Catholic, whoso a Pole, whoso has pity on the Most Holy Lady, let him follow me! To the relief of Chenstohova!”

  “I go!” shouted Roh Kovalski.

  Zagloba looked for a while on those present, and seeing astonishment and silent faces, he came down from the bench and said,—

  “I’ll teach Sapyeha reason! I am a rascal if by tomorrow I do not take half the army from Tykotsin and lead it to Chenstohova.”

  “For God’s sake, restrain yourself, father!” said Pan Yan.

  “I’m a rascal, I tell you!” repeated Zagloba.

  They were frightened lest he should carry out his threat, for he was able to do so. In many squadrons there was murmuring at the delay in Tykotsin; men really gnashed their teeth thinking of Chenstohova. It was enough to cast a spark on that powder; and what if a man so stubborn, of such immense knightly importance as Zagloba, should cast it? To begin with, the greater part of Sapyeha’s army was composed of new recruits, and therefore of men unused to discipline, and ready for action on their own account, and they would have gone as one man without doubt after Zagloba to Chenstohova.

  Therefore both Skshetuskis were frightened at this undertaking, and Volodyovski cried,—

  “Barely has a small army been formed by the greatest labor of the voevoda, barely is there a little power for the defence of the Commonwealth, and you wish with disorder to break up the squadrons, bring them to disobedience. Radzivill would pay much for such counsel, for it is water to his mill. Is it not a shame for you to speak of such a deed?”

  “I’m a scoundrel if I don’t do it!” said Zagloba.

  “Uncle will do it!” said Kovalski.

  “Silence, you horseskull!” roared out Pan Michael.

  Pan Roh stared, shut his mouth, and straightened himself at once.

  Then Volodyovski turned to Zagloba: “And I am a scoundrel if one man of my squadron goes with you; you wish to ruin the army, and I tell you that I will fall first upon your volunteers.”

  “O Pagan, faithless Turk!” said Zagloba. “How is that? you would attack knights of the Most Holy Lady? Are you ready? Well, I know you! Do you think, gentlemen, that it is a question with him of an army or discipline? No! he sniffs Panna Billevich behind the walls of Tykotsin. For a private question, for your own wishes you would not hesitate to desert the best cause. You would be glad to flutter around a maiden, to stand on one foot, then the other, and display yourself. But nothing will come of this! My head for it, that better than you are running after her, even that same Kmita, for even he is no worse than you.”

  Volodyovski looked at those present, taking them to witness what injustice was done him; then he frowned. They thought he would burst out in anger, but because he had been drinking, he fell all at once into tenderness.

  “This is my reward,” said he. “From the years of a stripling I have served the country; I have not put the sabre out of my hand! I have neither cottage, wife, nor children; my head is as lone as a lance-point. The most honorable think of themselves, but I have no rewards save wounds in the flesh; nay, I am accused of selfishness, almost held a traitor.”

  Tears began to drop on his yellow mustaches. Zagloba softened in a moment, and throwing open his arms, cried,—

  “Pan Michael, I have done you cruel injustice! I should be given to the hangman for having belittled such a tried friend!”

  Then falling into mutual embraces, they began to kiss each other; they drank more to good understanding, and when sorrow had gone considerably out of his heart, Volodyovski said,—

  “But you will not ruin the army, bring disobedience, and give an evil example?”

  “I will not, Pan Michael, I will not for your sake.”

  “God grant us to take Tykotsin; whose affair is it what I seek behind the walls of the fortress? Why should any man jeer at me?”

  Struck by that question, Zagloba began to put the ends of his mustaches in his mouth and gnaw them; at last he said: “Pan Michael, I love you as the apple of my eye, but drive that Panna Billevich out of your head.”

  “Why?” asked Pan Michael, with astonishment.

  “She is beautiful, assentior (I agree),” answered Zagloba, “but she is distinguished in person, and there is no proportion whatever between you. You might sit on her shoulder, like a canary-bird, and peck sugar out of her mouth. She might carry you like a falcon on her glove, and let you off against every enemy, for though you are little you are venomous like a hornet.”

  “Well, have you begun?” asked Volodyovski.

  “If I have begun, then let me finish. There is one woman as if created for you, and she is precisely that kernel— What is her name? That one whom Podbipienta was to marry?�
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  “Anusia Borzobogati!” cried Pan Yan. “She is indeed an old love of Michael’s.”

  “A regular grain of buckwheat, but a pretty little rogue; just like a doll,” said Zagloba, smacking his lips.

  Volodyovski began to sigh, and to repeat time after time what he always repeated when mention was made of Anusia: “What is happening to the poor girl? Oh, if she could only be found!”

  “You would not let her out of your hands, for, God bless me, I have not seen in my life any man so given to falling in love. You ought to have been born a rooster, scratch the sweepings in a house-yard, and cry, ‘Co, co, co,’ at the top-knots.”

  “Anusia! Anusia!” repeated Pan Michael. “If God would send her to me—But perhaps she is not in the world, or perhaps she is married—”

  “How could she be? She was a green turnip when I saw her, and afterward, even if she ripened, she may still be in the maiden state. After such a man as Podbipienta she could not take any common fellow. Besides, in these times of war few are thinking of marriage.”

  “You did not know her well,” answered Pan Michael. “She was wonderfully honest; but she had such a nature that she let no man pass without piercing his heart. The Lord God created her thus. She did not miss even men of lower station; for example, Princess Griselda’s physician, that Italian, who was desperately in love with her. Maybe she has married him and he has taken her beyond the sea.”

  “Don’t talk such nonsense, Michael!” cried Zagloba, with indignation. “A doctor, a doctor,—that the daughter of a noble of honorable blood should marry a man of such low estate! I have already said that that is impossible.”

  “I was angry with her myself, for I thought, ‘This is without limit; soon she will be turning the heads of attorneys.’”

  “I prophesy that you will see her yet,” said Zagloba.

  Further conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Pan Tokarzevich, who had served formerly with Radzivill, but after the treason of the hetman, left him, in company with others, and was now standard-bearer in Oskyerko’s regiment.

  “Colonel,” said he to Volodyovski, “we are to explode a petard.”

  “Is Pan Oskyerko ready?”

  “He was ready at midday, and he is not willing to wait, for the night promises to be dark.”

  “That is well; we will go to see. I will order the men to be ready with muskets, so that the besieged may not make a sortie. Will Pan Oskyerko himself explode the petard?”

  “He will—in his own person. A crowd of volunteers go with him.”

  “And I will go!” said Volodyovski.

  “And we!” cried Pan Yan and Pan Stanislav.

  “Oh, ‘tis a pity that old eyes cannot see in the dark,” said Zagloba, “for of a surety I should not let you go alone. But what is to be done? When dusk comes I cannot draw my sword. In the daytime, in the daytime, in the sunlight, then the old man likes to move to the field. Give me the strongest of the Swedes, if at midday.”

  “But I will go,” said, after some thought, the tenant of Vansosh. “When they blow up the gate the troops will spring to the storm in a crowd, and in the castle there may be great wealth in plate and in jewels.”

  All went out, for it was now growing dark; in the quarters Zagloba alone remained. He listened for a while to the snow squeaking under the steps of the departing men, then began to raise one after another the decanters, and look through them at the light burning in the chimney to see if there was something yet in any of them.

  The others marched toward the castle in darkness and wind, which rose from the north and blew with increasing force, howling, storming, bringing with it clouds of snow broken fine.

  “A good night to explode a petard!” said Volodyovski.

  “But also for a sortie,” answered Pan Yan. “We must keep a watchful eye and ready muskets.”

  “God grant,” said Pan Tokarzevich, “that at Chenstohova there is a still greater storm. It is always warmer for our men behind the walls. But may the Swedes freeze there on guard, may they freeze!”

  “A terrible night!” said Pan Stanislav; “do you hear, gentlemen, how it howls, as if Tartars were rushing through the air to attack?”

  “Or as if devils were singing a requiem for Radzivill!” said Volodyovski.

  CHAPTER XV.

  But a few days subsequent the great traitor in the castle was looking at the darkness coming down on the snowy shrouds and listening to the howling of the wind.

  The lamp of his life was burning out slowly. At noon of that day he was still walking around and looking through the battlements, at the tents and the wooden huts of Sapyeha’s troops; but two hours later he grew so ill that they had to carry him to his chambers.

  From those times at Kyedani in which he had striven for a crown, he had changed beyond recognition. The hair on his head had grown white, around his eyes red rings had formed, his face was swollen and flabby, therefore it seemed still more enormous, but it was the face of a half corpse, marked with blue spots and terrible through its expression of hellish suffering.

  And still, though his life could be measured by hours, he had lived too long, for not only had he outlived faith in himself and his fortunate star, faith in his own hopes and plans, but his fall was so deep that when he looked at the bottom of that precipice to which he was rolling, he would not believe himself. Everything had deceived him: events, calculations, allies. He, for whom it was not enough to be the mightiest lord in Poland, a prince of the Roman Empire, grand hetman, and voevoda of Vilna; he, for whom all Lithuania was less than what he desired and was lusting after, was confined in one narrow, small castle in which either Death or Captivity was waiting for him. And he watched the door every day to see which of these two terrible goddesses would enter first to take his soul or his more than half-ruined body.

  Of his lands, of his estates and starostaships, it was possible not long before to mark out a vassal kingdom; now he is not master even of the walls of Tykotsin.

  Barely a few months before he was treating with neighboring kings; to-day one Swedish captain obeys his commands with impatience and contempt, and dares to bend him to his will.

  When his troops left him, when from a lord and a magnate who made the whole country tremble, he became a powerless pauper who needed rescue and assistance himself, Karl Gustav despised him. He would have raised to the skies a mighty ally, but he turned with haughtiness from the supplicant.

  Like Kostka Napyerski, the foot-pad, besieged on a time in Chorshtyn, is he, Radzivill, besieged now in Tykotsin. And who is besieging him? Sapyeha, his greatest personal enemy. When they capture him they will drag him to justice in worse fashion than a robber, as a traitor.

  His kinsmen have deserted him, his friends, his connections. Armies have plundered his property, his treasures and riches are blown into mist, and that lord, that prince, who once upon a time astonished the court of France and dazzled it with his luxury, he who at feasts received thousands of nobles, who maintained tens of thousands of his own troops, whom he fed and supported, had not now wherewith to nourish his own failing strength; and terrible to relate, he, Radzivill, in the last moments of his life, almost at the hour of his death, was hungry!

  In the castle there had long been a lack of provisions; from the scant remaining supplies the Swedish commander dealt stingy rations, and the prince would not beg of him.

  If only the fever which was devouring his strength had deprived him of consciousness; but it had not. His breast rose with increasing heaviness, his breath turned into a rattle, his swollen feet and hands were freezing, but his mind, omitting moments of delirium, omitting the terrible visions and nightmares which passed before his eyes, remained for the greater part of the time clear. And that prince saw his whole fall, all his want, all his misery and humiliation; that former warrior-victor saw all his defeat, and his sufferings were so immense that they co
uld be equalled only by his sins.

  Besides, as the Furies tormented Orestes, so was he tormented by reproaches of conscience, and in no part of the world was there a sanctuary to which he could flee from them. They tormented him in the day, they tormented him at night, in the field, under the roof; pride could not withstand them nor repulse them. The deeper his fall, the more fiercely they lashed him. And there were moments in which he tore his own breast. When enemies came against his country from every side, when foreign nations grieved over its hapless condition, its sufferings and bloodshed, he, the grand hetman, instead of moving to the field, instead of sacrificing the last drop of his blood, instead of astonishing the world like Leonidas or Themistocles, instead of pawning his last coat like Sapyeha, made a treaty with enemies against the mother, raised a sacrilegious hand against his own king, and imbrued it in blood near and dear to him. He had done all this, and now he is at the limit not only of infamy, but of life, close to his reckoning, there beyond. What is awaiting him?